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Parallels 7 - How good is it for games?

luffytubby

luffytubby

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 22, 2008
684
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Has Parallels made big strides in gaming in the last couple of years? How do you guys think, Retina MBPs will run games through Parallels 7 virtualization software?

Im thinking of games like Guild Wars 2 and Assassins Creed 3 and such!
 
laetusviator said:
It will depend on the system used - what was used for that video?
Click to expand...

I just checked. apparently it was some crazy mac pro with hexar coresO_O


Damnn..


Some comment (on a video I cant find) said that Parallels work pretty decent with directx 9! But that it does not work with DX10 or 11. But DX9 it can do. There are still being made modern games (like guild wars 2) that use dx9 by default, so I wonder.



With low settings even in an un-optimized beta, in boot camp a entry sandy bridge intel HD 3000 can run Guild Wars at 25-30 frames per second. Considering how much more powerful an ivy bridge retina macbook pro is, should it be able to do some decent performance?




I ask about virtualization because I had a HDD based Imac back in early 08, and it was great, but it was annoying to boot into windows vista (before 7 was released!) 5-10 times every day to just play a game for 5-30 minutes. Im not the type of gamer who plays for long stretches of time, and gaming is not my first priority, but still important to me, though I dont expect to play demanding games like battlefield 3 or skyrim unless boot camping.

Im just talking about these online gamers were you quickly log in and play and then go about your business!


The difference is that my Imac had a 1 TB HDD. These macbooks have SSD so they should load faster. Maybe boot camping wont be as annoying these days because windows 7 will launch so fast? I could make a 80 gb partition and just use boot camp as a pure steam machine, and do nothing else. I am not sure if its feesable.

I def, want to use OSX for anything else. it would just be great to be able to run a virtualization of some games that dont have crazy particle effects while im doing other stuff on my mac as well. I understand MBP is not a gaming machine. I can justify 2800 dollars on a gaming notebook. Gaming just so happens to be what I like and if I could do all my computing with one laptop, that would be a bliss.
 
You should have your machine setup for bootcamp, and have Parallels installed.

Parallels can USE your bootcamp partition for all its needs.

If the game works, it works. If it doesn't you can just boot up in windows for that game.

Tons of stuff does work, and it will and does get better over time. Sometimes you just have to run in windows and that works too.

It's good to be on a mac.
 
I've only tried world of warcraft in parallels 7.
On a macbook 2.4GHz and geforce 320m it was ~20fps on medium settings.

So with a higher end machine I imagine that a lot of games will be playable.
 
bit density said:
You should have your machine setup for bootcamp, and have Parallels installed.

Parallels can USE your bootcamp partition for all its needs.
Click to expand...

Does this run into problems with windows activation? I always assumed it would cause windows to think it was on a second system and get all uppity...
 
make sure you do NOT activate it... until afteer you get it up and running then activate it in Parallels... it does something to make sure it stays activated. If you activate Windows before setting it up through parallels, it can get messed up
 
Typically you would use Parallels for older games or games based on older engines that are not as demanding. I use Parallels mostly to play Dota 2 (latest Source engine). I think it would be fine with GW2 and Assassin's Creed.
 
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